Feel free to experiment with your favorite seafood in this classic San Franciscan fisherman's stew. And don't forget to use the toasts slathered with zippy gremolata butter to soak up the flavorful broth. Bonus: This stew is great for entertaining since you can make the base a day in advance.Photo and recipe courtesy of Epicurious.

All across Delta del Ebro you will find great restaurants where you can enjoy the local rice speciality, cooked with other local ingredients. This is my lobster rice recipe, with a little help from Ca’l Faiges … the flavour of their lobster is to die for.If you are lucky enough to go there, don’t order one per person – the portion sizes are really generous! And remember to ask for the ortiguillas (anemones) too. They’re simply deep-fried – you won’t regret ordering them. — José Pizarro, author of Catalonia

Feel free to experiment with your favorite seafood in this classic San Franciscan fisherman's stew. And don't forget to use the toasts slathered with zippy gremolata butter to soak up the flavorful broth. Bonus: This stew is great for entertaining since you can make the base a day in advance.Photo and recipe courtesy of Epicurious.

There are (relatively) complicated ways to make fishcakes, like a method I described some years ago , which involved onions, celery and eggs, and which substituted celery root for the usual potatoes. Those are delicious, and I make something like them every now and again. Yet the basic fishcake – essentially, cooked fish and boiled potatoes smashed together and fried – is a lovely thing, and Jackie and I had a few of them for dinner the other week, with what in her native Britain is called parsley sauce: béchamel containing lots of chopped parsley. It almost goes without saying, however, that I tinkered with both the fishcakes and their sauce: only a little, but it made a difference by lending brightness to a dish that cannot always be said to sparkle. What I did was add capers to the fishcakes and freshly grated horseradish to the sauce. Neither was a stretch: Capers are much used with fish of all kinds, and horseradish is an established partner of cream sauces hot and cold. The fish came from the freezer. I am sometimes ribbed about my restauranty practice of trimming fish into neat portions of nearly uniform thickness. I do this in part because such pieces cook more evenly, but also because I like having the off-cuts in the freezer for things like ... fishcakes. In this case, the fish was hake, which is related to cod and haddock; it is just about ideal for this recipe because it breaks up easily into flakes and because it has enough flavor to fight its way through the potatoes but not so much that it swamps them. Like cod, it benefits mightily from being salted half an hour before cooking, which improves texture and flavor. Here, I use thinner pieces from the tail end; if you are using plumper fillets, add half a minute to the initial simmering time. My proportion of potato to fish (a little heavy on the potatoes) is a family preference; there’d be no harm in using equal weights of these two principal ingredients, but I don’t recommend tipping the balance too far in favor of the fish: Fishcakes are as much a potato dish as anything. Everything apart from the final frying should be done in advance to give the fishcakes time to firm up in the refrigerator.

Facts & Tips

What is Hake?

Have you ever seen the name of a fish at the seafood market or on a restaurant menu and you aren’t quite sure what it is? Well, chances are it might have been hake. Hake is a lean white fish that is part of the cod family. Its mild flavor and delicate texture make it a popular seafood choice in the United States and Europe.[related] Click...